Singularities, positrons, dark energy, Fast Radio Bursts. Will we ever decipher these puzzling wonders? When I think about supernovae, black holes or dark matter, I must admit — they seem unreal. They appear right out of a good science-fiction book. But as staggering and elusive as these phenomena might be…

Worlds that elude our imagination. Super-Earth, Twin Earth, habitable zone, liquid water. In the 1990s, when we discovered the first exoplanets — planets outside our solar system –we started frantically looking for a rock similar to ours which could host life, similar to ours. And that’s perfectly reasonable. Finding any…

Our planet is a lot more special than you might think. The third rock from the Sun, the pale blue dot, the World, home. Whatever you chose to call it, the fact remains that out of the trillions of celestial bodies in the universe, it is the only one where…

What is hiding in our neighborhood? In September 2020 British scientists revealed they detected phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. Phosphine is a toxic compound made from phosphorus and hydrogen. On Earth, it’s only produced by tiny microbes that live in oxygen-free environments. We can’t confirm that phosphine is a…

What would it take to reach other stars? In 1584 when Giordano Bruno proposed that other stars were distant suns similar to ours and have planets of their own, he was of course right. But he was only guessing. …

Will dream become a reality? Laura Lark just signed up for the weirdest mission of her life. This is January 2017 and she has spent the last 5 years as a Google software engineer. But she is about to embark on a whole different adventure. She and five other “astronauts”…

Whose names we forget when we look at the stars? In 1923 Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin completed her studies of astronomy at the University of Cambridge. But she could not get a degree. For one simple reason: she was a woman. …

Hot Jupiters, super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, ice giants. You must have heard of these strange worlds. They make us dream. They make us burn with curiosity. They make our mind travel through the galaxy and imagine how they might look like and what they might be hiding. But have you ever wondered…

You don’t need me to tell you that space is humongous. We’ve all found ourselves staring at the night sky in awe of its vastness and wondering what lies beyond the horizon. Let’s try and understand how vast the universe actually is, so that we can better appreciate that measuring…